A unprecedented assortment of uncommon postcards exhibiting feminine soccer gamers has been discovered forward of Worldwide Ladies’s Day. The beautiful photographs have by no means been seen collectively earlier than.
They’re now on show at a particular exhibition. A few of them date way back to 1895. They supply an excellent snapshot of the success of ladies’s soccer till it was controversially banned in 1921.
The historian who lastly managed to place the total set collectively stated he was delighted to have secured the postcards earlier than Saturday – eighth March which is Worldwide Ladies’s Day. Steve Bolton stated: 'The unique ladies’s soccer postcards actually are a novel piece of historical past and it’s astonishing that they’ve survived over 100 years.
'Most of my assortment has been acquired from eBay, with a couple of objects from specialist sports activities auctions and some very, very form donations.' Steve, 60, a instructor, is a passionate collector of early ladies’s soccer memorabilia, with match programmes going again to 1921 and postcards going again to 1895. He spends hours on eBay trying to find the hidden gems.
He stated: 'Uncommon male soccer postcards can go for quite a lot of cash, whereas it’s nonetheless doable to search out bargains depicting ladies footballers, if you already know what to search for. However the market is rising – I managed to select up a uncommon 1925 French crew postcard for a 3 determine sum, solely to see 10p pencilled on the again. It should have as soon as been in a shoebox at a collectors truthful, for the worth of ten pence!'
Steve turned a historian after discovering his grandmother, Lizzy Ashcroft, was one of many nice gamers of the Twenties. He was only a youngster when Lizzy died, aged 68, in 1973. Steve stated: 'In a manner I’m an unintended historian. I merely began off looking for out when my granny’s first and final video games had been and someway have now ended up with over 100 folders of analysis.'
The postcards are on show at Valence Home Museum, Dagenham, east London. On Saturday Steve is giving a chat on Worldwide Ladies’s Day on the museum and exhibiting the brief movie Granny, about his grandmother. Penny Ryder, the actress who really starred within the movie, might be attending.
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